Bevan Foundation work makes it easier for people to get Council Tax support.
Insights
The Council Tax Reduction Scheme provides low income households with help with their Council Tax. The Bevan Foundation’s work on Welsh Benefits, found however, that thousands of people across Wales miss out on this support due to a lack of awareness and complex application processes.
Ideas
For a number of years the Bevan Foundation have been calling on the Welsh Government to establish a Welsh Benefits System. We have argued that doing so would enable the Welsh Government to develop an effective, coherent and seamless system of support for people on low incomes that helps to lift them out of poverty.
Among our specific ideas have been that a person in receipt of Universal Credit may be recognised by a council as having made an application for the Council Tax Reduction Scheme. This means that it will be much more likely that someone in receipt of Universal Credit will not have to make a separate application for help with their Council Tax.
Impact
The Welsh Government have announced that from April 2025 that a person in receipt of Universal Credit may be recognised by a council as having made an application for the Council Tax Reduction Scheme. This one change could increase take up from current levels of 55% to 65% to around 90%, meaning that more than 60,000 extra households could get the support they need, putting more than £67m back into the pockets of low income households across Wales.
Find out more about our work on Welsh Benefits here.
